The Internet has become an incredible source for providing of information and content. User devices transmit requests to a global network of web servers, and these servers return information through the global network to the user devices. Although the Internet makes a large volume of information available, finding information relevant to the user and providing that relevant information to the user are not easy tasks.
Conventional methods for obtaining relevant content from the Internet typically involves typing in search terms in a search engine provided on a website, optionally providing the location of the user via the user's IP address or GPS location, and retrieving a list of search results matching the search terms and optionally matching the location of the user. Hereto, the search engine on a web server executes a search algorithm to determine the search results. The search results, which are typically provided as hyperlinks, are then provided to the user on the user device, where the user can click/select the hyperlinks to obtain information hosted on other web servers. Although search engines are used ubiquitously, such method suffers from several deficiencies.
First, the search results may not always be relevant to the user. For instance, the search results may include spam links to web servers hosting websites having the search terms and/or keywords but no actual relevant information. In another instance, the search results may not always show the most relevant information at the top of the search results because the ranking of search results and the search algorithm itself is not precise and accurate. The search results are at best guesses as to what is relevant to the user. Based on concurrent search algorithms that favor listing web pages with more links can hinder information that is timely and local relative to the searcher therefore search on Internet information can be out of date and/or not real time.
Second, the Internet and the search results are potentially insecure. The links, especially in case of spam links, may lead to websites aiming to spread viruses to various devices, or to web servers whose identity or content cannot be trusted. Because anyone can host a web server on the Internet, the ease of entry enables anyone to provide content on the Internet and measures cannot always keep up with spammers to ensure that the search results and the content retrieved are secure.
Third, the Internet provides relatively little privacy protection for users. Information that flows on the Internet to various web servers may be easily obtainable by malicious parties, and little limits in the Internet are placed on where sensitive information can travel. The need for protecting privacy is particularly high when users are sharing location information of the user or the user device.
Moreover, the Internet-based architecture is particularly not useful when a user device is not conveniently communicably connected to the Internet or is technically not capable or suitable to connect to the Internet. For instance, a user device in the form of a mobile Internet device (e.g. a smartphone, tablet or any other mobile device capable of accessing the Internet) may be roaming on a foreign network different from its home network and may not want to incur charges for using the foreign network. In another instance, a mobile Internet device may not be configured with the technical means to access a foreign network, e.g. due to different use of frequency bands or wireless access technologies, or the mobile network may be (possibly temporarily) unavailable for connecting the mobile Internet device to the mobile network.
Mobile Internet devices typically use a common fixed (i.e. cable) infrastructure by linking to a telecoms' network of cellular and/or Wi-Fi antennas. Developing and advanced economic regions alike are experiencing a dramatic increase in the use of mobile Wi-Fi devices being used to access the Internet and therefore further accentuating the architectural issues, security weaknesses and overflow of irrelevant content. Mobile communication has developed along the proliferation of base stations emitting cellular and/or Wi-Fi networks that create access zones and roaming possibilities between zones. Herein, the base stations are communications nodes that may process user location information based on e.g. predetermined geographical information and unique user Identification Numbers assigned to e.g. a subscribers SIM card located in the mobile device. The infrastructure used by mobile Internet devices is typically designed to extend a subscription based regional, national or global coverage of service zones for access to the Internet and World Wide Web.
Besides the above mentioned drawbacks, another drawback of conventional Internet-based network architectures is the amount of data traffic already present and the (increasing) demand for content/services from users all over the world. When for example a website becomes suddenly popular or the demand for content/services on the website is relatively high, without an expensive and complex distributed server infrastructure the website could be unable to serve the global demand or even worse, crash. For example in situations where large crowds are gathered and the amount of concurrent Internet users increases, data flows to and from user devices may experience a bottleneck. As a result that users—especially users to which the content/service is most relevant—may not be able to access the content and/or services.
Furthermore, access to the Internet and the infrastructure to access the Internet is not always optimal, especially in developing countries or rural areas. Because of this, users could lack access to content and services that are relevant to them at a particular time and place.
For both poor and wealthy regions alike, the technical needs for connecting to the Internet and the World Wide Web ultimately comes down to cables connecting local routers to Internet exchange hubs directing data via transoceanic and/or underground cable networks. As this infrastructure grows, it increases in traffic and therefore so does the energy cost to support and sort its burgeoning data.
US 2009/0257376 discloses a method for delivering location based information in wireless zone. Herein the location based information is stored in the access point itself eliminating the need for a backend server. The access point has intelligence to deliver information customized to each requesting device's display capability. To provide seamless access to local information the user gets a default web page once the device connects to the access point and tries to access internet. This web page acts as a gateway to all the location based information available in the access point. A disadvantage of the method disclosed in US 2009/0257376 is that the information is tied to the (Wi-Fi) access point only. Furthermore, the geographical area (coverage) where the information is available cannot be modified.
While the Internet infrastructure is a global network infrastructure, Internet's data flows may actually be related to a specific (e.g. geographical) area and the users within this areas. The Internet infrastructure does not take this localized use of data into account, while there is a need to limit the amount of data on the Internet and the supporting costs of data transfer and storage to devices in such areas.
Thus, there is a need for a solution that enables content, such as can be found on the Internet, to be distributed to user devices in a way that aspects of relevancy of the content, security, privacy protection, connectivity convenience, optimal use of network resources and localized use of the content can be taken into account.